8. Unashamed
Early the next morning, I awoke feeling lighter than air, despite Jason’s arm wrapped tightly around my middle. I was relieved. I was satisfied. I had slept better than I had since arriving on the island, and the light rain outside penetrated my dreams. For the first time in nearly three weeks, I wanted to pick up one of my notebooks and begin to write.
I sighed contentedly, feeling the weight of Jason’s arm on my ribs, the pressure of his torso against mine. I turned to face him and found him already awake gazing dreamily at me. “Morning,” he said.
“Morning,” I replied. I kissed him gently, my nethers stirring in response. “I should get back to my cabin before Nikki gets up. I don’t want her to panic and call the resort police on me, or whatever they have here.”
“Why don’t you stay? We can wander over there later. Maybe go for round four?”
“As much as I love the idea of staying here and doing all sorts of delicious things with you—”
“To me,” he corrected.
I chuckled. “To you, but I need to go handle Nikki.” He groaned disappointedly into the pillow. “I know, but you don’t know how she can get. She’s my best friend—we talk about everything. She’s wanted me to get with you since I first realized how into you I was back in college, and I legitimately do not know how she’ll react to this. This isn’t something I want to spring on her.”
“Yeah, I get it. I just don’t want something else to get in our way this time.”
“If Annie somehow manages to show up asking why I’m here, I will tell her what happened. I’m not making that mistake again.”
“It wasn’t yours to begin with, so I’ll be the one to tell her. There’s no need to expose you to her rage if we can help it.” His lips lingered on my arm, slowly traveling up to my shoulder. But when his eyes met mine and saw no change to my determination, he sighed. “Fine. I release you,” he said, loosening his hold on me.
“Meet us later, okay? We’ll see where the day takes us.”
I dressed, kissed him once more, and wandered along the beach back to the cabin I shared with Nikki. The nearer I got, the more I hoped Siti had already left. I did not want to double the amount of awkward I was going to endure that morning.
I entered through the main door as quietly as I could, shoes in hand, and tiptoed over to the bed. Just as I sat on the edge near where I left my pillows and notebook, Nikki came out of her room looking rough. She startled me, so I feigned a yawning stretch. “Fun night with Siti?” I asked.
She flashed me a devilish grin before she disappeared into the bathroom. I picked up one of my notebooks and jotted down a few thoughts as quickly as I could. When she reappeared, she flopped down onto my bed, fluffing out her hair with one hand. “Hey, so… Can we talk about yesterday?”
“Which part? The ziplining? Your inescapably loud evening with Siti?”
She winced a little. “No, sorry about that. I mean what you said at the restaurant after ziplining. About breaking up with Fred.”
“Okay. I don’t know what more there is to say about it.”
“You don’t think you’re being a little rash?”
“Why? You’re the one who always calls him a dick. I’m just finally beginning to agree with you.”
“Yeah, but I talk smack about everyone. I never thought you would take me seriously. I don’t live with the guy,” she said, concern filling her eyes.
“You’re right; you don’t.” The concern did not waver, so I closed my notebook and set it aside. “How many times have I said that I wanted to travel the world, that I wanted to go on an adventure? Tons. And I always thought that Fred felt the same way, but when I really look back on it, I realize he was just placating me. ‘Yeah, sure, of course. Whatever you want.’ The more I think about it, that’s all he really did. You want to know the real reason I was looking forward to this anniversary, this vacation? I was hoping that he would finally pay attention to me and propose. How deluded is that? I’ve been depressed and lonely for almost a year and I’m hoping to be married to that? It’s ridiculous. And I’m just waking up to it. I’m waking up to five wasted years.”
She sat up and leveled me with her stare. “Okay, I understand your train of thought. But after only about a week of being away from him, and being all mopey and sad, suddenly you’re over it?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation.
She blinked in disbelief. “Just like that? Honey, don’t you think you should discuss it with Fred first?”
“Why? He didn’t feel the need to discuss Chicago with me,” I snipped, starting to feel a little angry.
“Well that’s my point. You have been patiently waiting for him to do something for you, but maybe he just doesn’t know that that’s what you want. Just leaving him wouldn’t be giving him a chance to change.”
“But I have voiced my desires for adventure repeatedly in the past. If he hasn’t caught on, then he hasn’t been listening. I mentioned wanting adventure one time to Jason, and he brought us ziplining the very next day. It’s not that I’m not speaking loud enough, it’s that he refuses to listen. In fact, funny story—”
“Okay,” she interrupted. “But where are you going to live? You say you’re moving out, but where are you going to go while you look for a place?”
“He’s in Chicago until the end of the month. I have time to look before I go.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Nikki, stop. I’ve made up my mind. Don’t try to talk me out of it. You might think I have vacation goggles on and am jumping to an irrational conclusion, but seriously, I haven’t been this clear-headed in a very long time. Don’t I deserve to live my life for me? I can’t keep waiting for him to wake up and see me. I haven’t even made a decision in years without asking someone’s opinion first, or having them tell me outright what I should do. It’s time for me to step up and do what I want to do.” Too frustrated to say anything more, I stood, grabbed a towel, and went to take a shower.
I’ll tell her about last night later. When I’ve calmed down.
Really hearing myself say the things I had said to Nikki was unbelievable. My pulse raced with fear and adrenaline. It was empowering. I hadn’t lived alone in a long time. Before I lived with Fred, I lived with a roommate who was rarely around. It was the closest I got to living alone. Before that, I still lived with my parents, and I wasn’t going back to that. Besides, I still had a little money leftover after this trip, and my book sales weren’t a horrible income.
Nikki called into the bathroom a couple minutes later. “Hey, Jason’s here. If you want to hang out, we’ll meet you at the bar.”
“Okay,” I called back, rinsing shampoo out of my hair.
I blow-dried my hair, fluffing and lightly combing it with my fingers. I decided that I liked the way it looked down for once, the natural waves of red cascading over my shoulders in a devil-may-care manner, so I chose not to braid it or pull it back into my trademark low ponytail. Still feeling adventurous, I put on my bikini. The blue and white sarong I had bought specifically to go with it had been put to poor use as a shawl so far, so I draped it across my hips and tied it to the side—the side that didn’t have a purple hickey poking out from my bottoms. As I made my way out the door, I gave myself a cursory glance, smiled with approval, and closed the door behind me.
How could I have been so self-conscious and scared to wear this outfit?As I passed, I could see a couple of men smiling at me. And a few women, too. But to be honest, I didn’t care how I looked to them. The sun warmed my skin where it touched, and the light breeze cooled it, keeping me feeling comfortable as I never thought I could be in such an outfit.
I made my way to the hotel bar just off the beach and quickly found Nikki and Jason sitting at a little table under an umbrella. Nikki had found a bright pink flower and put it in her hair over her left ear. I had thought about doing the same, but most things I had put over my ears had always found a way to fall out of place within seconds of placement.
Nikki caught sight of me first, her jaw dropping in comical shock as her eyes raked over me from head to toe. “Holy shit, Gemma. You look… you look hot!”
Jason turned to see me, and I could tell he was impressed. “No more one-piece?” he asked. His appreciation of my form was evident, and I thrilled at his gaze.
I sat between them at the circular table and smiled. “It didn’t feel like it fit my new carefree attitude.” I turned to Nikki and laughed. “Nik, it’s not like my tits are something you’ve never seen before.”
Her eyes jumped back to my face. “I know but… now they’re just… out there. They’re tasting freedom and sunshine. Hell, they look like they’re downright rejoicing.” Her eyes drifted back down as she took another sip from her frozen drink.
“Question for the council,” said Jason. “How do breasts rejoice?”
Nikki shrugged. “Just look at them. Have you ever seen a happier pair?”
Jason cleared his throat loudly and averted his eyes. “I plead the fifth.”
I made a note to bring that up with him later.
“Okay, no more tit talk. I am not made of boobs. I am simply a woman who is embracing herself in all her glory no matter what anyone thinks. We shall not dwell on how I look, okay? But thanks for the hot comment, Nik.”
She grinned in return.
“So what do we have planned for the day? A little oceaning, some drinking, maybe something out of the ordinary?”
“Oceaning?” asked Jason, confused.
“If you guys are okay, I was going to meet up with Siti a little later. He wants to show me some of the ‘hidden beauties’ of the island that most tourists don’t get to see.”
“Sounds like a way to get a lot of tourist booty, if you ask me,” I mused. To Jason, I said, “So, what are you thinking?”
“Um, well, I heard of this place over on Levuka where you can visit an historic site by walking up something like two hundred steps. Seems like it could be interesting. If you’re up for it, of course.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Can’t really top the zipline adventure, can you?”
“Not without at least twenty four hours notice, no.” His eyes also said, Unless you want to take me up on my earlier offer of staying in all day.
“Then I’m in.”
As Nikki got up to leave, she said, “I am sorry about last night, Gems. I’ll try not to let it happen again. It’s a good thing you had those noise canceling headphones, huh?”
Jason shot me a look. After Nikki was out of earshot, he asked, “You didn’t tell her?”
“She woke up after I snuck in. She had no idea I was even gone. And when I was about to tell her, she started giving me the third degree about ending it with Fred. I got angry and needed to calm down.”
“That explains why she didn’t say anything to me. If she’d known, she wouldn’t have shut up about it.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to keep it a secret from her. I promise I’ll tell her today.”
“I’m not mad,” he said and leaned close to me. “I just don’t want to spend another decade pretending this didn’t happen.”
A quick brush of his lips across mine filled me with warmth and an indescribable energy. For an instant, I pictured him draped in only the gauzy sheets of his bed, and a deep yearning began to grow below my navel. I was dangerously close to losing the entire day to my acutely insatiable lust. I pulled back reluctantly and said, “So, Levuka, you say?”
* * *
Not knowing the islands of Fiji very well, I had no idea that it would take a few hours to get to the tiny island of Levuka by boat, bus, and finally ferry. According to Jason, neither did he. But it was nice to see everything along the way, even if I did have to re-tie my sarong into a more appropriate cover-up for the journey. And wear shoes. I didn’t really mind, though, since I suddenly had no reason to hide my affections. We held hands, I let my head rest on his shoulder. I could not stop touching him in one way or another.
When we reached the tiny village set on the eastern beach of the island, it was nearly sunset. It felt wrong for the sun to be setting so early, but then again, I still hadn’t really adjusted to the time change here. We had a quick meal, then made our way to the site.
“So, my research on this place is a bit sparse,” Jason told me as we walked toward the site, “but apparently it’s called the 199 Steps of Mission Hill. Also, it’s allegedly a misnomer, since there aren’t actually a hundred ninety-nine steps.”
“Are there more or less?”
“Uh, my research was unclear about that. Apparently people are always too busy looking at the historical sites surrounding the steps than counting the actual steps. Lazy bastards,” he added, flashing an amused grin my way.
We passed by several historic sites on the way up. At the base of the steps was an old church with a Gothic-style stone tower on one side of it. At the top of the steps and along a path was the Mission House, the site where a man named Cakobau was proclaimed King of Fiji.
“I didn’t know there was a king of Fiji,” I said, reading the signpost.
“I think there’s been a king of just about everywhere at one point or another.”
“True.” I looked up at the sky growing purple in the east, a splash of pink and orange still glowing above the trees to the west. “It’s really starting to get dark now.”
“Yeah, we should probably get back while we still can. The boats don’t ferry people for long once it gets dark.”
We walked back along the path to the dirt clearing just above the steps, where I stopped. The view was breathtaking. We could see over the tops of all the buildings in the village, and clear out to the open ocean for days. “Whoa,” was all I could say at the sight.
“That’s amazing. I don’t think I’ve been up high enough to get a view like this since I landed.”
I took in the magnificence, the waters fading to inky black under the darkening storm clouds rolling in, the warm colors of the setting sun behind me only highlighting the edges of each cloud.
It was at that very moment that I remembered something. A moment I had nearly forgotten after all this time. “Hey, do you remember during our senior year, we dared each other to watch the sunrise over the cemetery just outside the campus?”
“God, I almost forgot,” he breathed. “I remember it was in the spring semester, sometime in March or April.”
“Close to graduation, I think. Before that night.”
“You were freezing,” he laughed.
“So were you! And if I remember rightly, I was the one smart enough to bring a blanket.”
“Yes, but not smart enough to bring more than one.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault you didn’t think of yourself. To be honest, it may have been my subconscious trying any excuse to be close to you.”
He wrapped his arms around my waist from behind and stared out over the ocean with me. “We had to curl under that tiny blanket on the steps of a little mausoleum. It was creepy at that time of day. I’m not ashamed to admit, I was wearing my roommate’s cross necklace and had a pocket knife on me for protection.”
“A cross necklace? Really? Did you have a clove of garlic as well?”
“We were kids back then. What do you want from me?”
I sighed, breathing in the ocean air, his scent, reminiscing. “You still would have those things if we did it today, wouldn’t you?”
“Definitely,” he replied without a breath. “God. If you could go back, what would you say to the younger you? What would you do differently?”
I thought back to that night, the two of us sharing each other’s warmth on a marble step perched on a hill looking over the entire campus, guzzling sugary energy drinks to keep from passing out. I remembered his friendship throughout the four years we shared in that establishment, helping me out with my articles for the newspaper until I could be creative, sharing notes in our classes once we started scheduling them together. And I wondered, what would I do if I knew then what I know now?
“I would have kissed you,” I said. “Right there, at the mausoleum, I would have cuddled up close and planted one on your cheek, at least.”
“We were both in relationships then,” he said.
“And how is that really so different from now? At that time, Annie was about to break up with you, and I was maybe a month or two from being totally fed up with whatever his name was. I don’t know what would have happened in the long run, but maybe we both could have avoided the last decade with the wrong people. So, if I had to relive that night with my current knowledge, I would have kissed you. Even if you were with Annie.”
He was quiet for a moment, still holding me close. “So much wasted time,” he said finally.
“I’ve been waiting all this time for Fred to treat me like you always treated me, and we weren’t even dating. Your friendship was the one thing I compared them all to.”
He turned me to face him, the shadows casting his face into a more serious expression than I was used to seeing from him. “No more wasted moments,” he said. “No more hidden feelings. I want this to be real.”
Perhaps it was the humidity in the air, but I was suddenly covered in a thin layer of sweat, my skin sticky in the heat between us. The steady pulse throbbing between my thighs, though, was purely a result of staring into his burning eyes, my desire to tear his clothes from him in an instant, of coming together until the world around us slipped away.
“Being here doesn’t seem real, does it?” I said. “It’s a fantasy. Like a dream we’re having between episodes of real life. Until we really say it to them, really end it for good, that’s all it will be, isn’t it?”
“So we agree?”
I was sure. I had never been so certain of anything other than my choice of career at a very young age. I felt the same conviction fill me as I surrendered to his gaze.
I nodded. “Blow shit up so we can rebuild together.”
Amusement pierced through his seriousness. “You’re horrible,” he jested. He pulled the phone from his pocket. “No time to detonate but the present.”
“You’re calling her now?”
“Aren’t you?”
Embarrassed, I said, “I left my phone back in the cabin. Plus, isn’t it kind of late in Connecticut?”
I watched him do the time zone math on his fingers and then grimace. “It’s after midnight. But you know what? She’s usually up late, and it’s pretty clear to me that she’s moved on herself, so I’m not waiting anymore.”
“Okay. Let’s start walking towards the boat, and you can rip off that bandage on the way. I’m here to support you,” I added, and laced my fingers through his.
He pressed the icon to call Annie and we started walking down the steps. Jason was right, I had been so distracted that I never did get a real count of them all.
“Annie? Hey, I know it’s late, but I don’t think we should wait any longer. You know what I’m talking about. Because I’m here in Fiji in the room you booked us and you never showed, so I think it’s pretty clear—”
I couldn’t hear the words she said, but I could hear the pitch of her voice lift. I squeezed Jason’s hand encouragingly.
“Annie,” he interrupted her. I pinched my lips together to keep from laughing at the image of her in my head—how stunned she appeared at him standing his ground with her. I knew the face she would make too well, which is why she never really liked me. I never let her get away with any bullshit back in school, let alone her attempts at getting me to back down. The first time I’d said no to her, she looked like I’d slapped her across the face and called her something foul. I was only a little ashamed of how entertaining I found it.
“Annie, we both know it’s over. When I get home, I’ll call a lawyer and get the divorce papers set up. We’ll figure all that other stuff out when I get back. Wait, where are you? I can hear things in the background and that doesn’t sound like anywhere I know. Cancun? Spring break? Jesus.”
Annie was in Cancun for spring break? I supposed it was true that some people never really grew up.
“Fine, enjoy your vacation. Don’t do anything stupid, and we’ll talk when I get back.” When he hung up, he looked confused. “That’s not how I thought that was going to go.”
“It did seem a little more pleasant than I imagined,” I agreed. “But now it’s done.”
He pressed the back of my hand to his lips and smiled. “It’s done. For me. Let’s hurry back so you can pull the ripcord on Fred.”